DANCING HARLEM'S RENAISSANCE BLUES
Africans dance. King David danced. Salome danced for John. Bojangles danced. Dunham danced. Dance is the metronome of a people. Dance embodies the rhythm of its people . Taking away dance takes away tacit communications linkages that bind a people.
Learning yesterday, October 31, 2017, that the City of New York had finally repealed a 91-year old law, precluding dancing in "cabarets" where food and liquor were served, I was shocked to learn of the existence of such an absurdly insidious law!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/pitchfork.com/news/new-york-city-council-votes-to-repeal-anti-dancing-cabaret-law/amp/
"When Harlem was in Vogue," it was all about music, dance, white folks swarming uptown to immerse in black culture in Harlem: to dance with, to mate with, to patronize, to mimic the amazing energy of that era's juggernaut. Harlem was the heart of the "Harlem Renaissance." That cultural revolution is now broadly misunderstood, is now naively misinterpreted, as being one limited to poets, novelists, painters, sculptors. A Negro outpouring of arts and culture, that consisted of music, dance, literature, plays, fashion, black consciousness, art, it was. But, it was also much much more: both pervasive and Pan-African!
Just as quickly, it seems in retrospect, those ever-viperous, racist outliers and their lawyers, downtown, caught the "A-Train;" moved uptown to Harlem to destroy this Negro renaissance's extraordinary, cultural resurgence. Dancing was one of its victims!
Down went the "Lindy Hop!" an others that fabled, sensual pairing of twirling, whirling, male and female rhythmical athletes,who were clad in stylized attire that was fashionable and fantastic!
Around this time, "the numbers," or "policy," that black self-help economic recycling engine that had raised millions of dollars from black patrons, inside of the black community for home mortgages, tuition payments, car notes, rent, groceries, business ventures, everyday needs, was mislabeled as a so-called "racket" by crooked New York politicians, who coveted its cream, wealth!
This financial wheel of the Harlem Renaissance was broken up. And its principal founder, Caspar Holstein, a mathematically -minded, former black elevator operator, from the Danish West Indies, who had studied the New York Stock Exchange, and who had found their his latent algorithm, upon which he assiduously based a number's "hit," was jailed and then deported.
Holstein's financial empire, which at one time employed hundreds in Harlem, was then taken over by some infamously murderous mafiosi figures. These terrorists bombed black numbers bankers. They killed the numbers runners. They took over the numbers. They rigged the game, making it pay less than the predictable, 600-1, as before. They paid off police, politicians, judges, in turn.
Around the same time in the 1920's, that "unlicensed" cabaret dancing was being outlawed in New York City, and that the "numbers" "racket" was being handed over to terrorist mafia figures, by secret agreements between them, prosecutors, police, the numbers were also legislatively later made to be illegal there in the state. ( It now is called "The Lottery" and operates all over America). At this time, too, the renown founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey of St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, was being prosecuted for alleged mail/securities fraud by the federal government.
The documentary evidence against Marcus Garvey consisted of a single empty post-marked envelope that contained nothing. Yet, the U. S. Department of Justice was able to "convict" this exalted global leader of tens of millions of black people of mail fraud. Garvey had been trying to raise money for the Black Star Ship Line from among UNIA members, to return to Africa, and away from white American racism in America, Cuba, Central America, elsewhere.
What kind of people would prevent, would sabotage attempts of others, from doing for themselves;, then, thereafter having disabled that person or group, by laws, regulations, selective enforcement of police, mafia, or prosecutions; then, turn right around to belittle them, to mock them, to lampoon them, and others like them, for not having been able to do for themselves? Surely only a perverse people, an oppressive people would behave in such a way!
Now it is clear to me, at least, why Louise Meriweather's profound sociological book yet eerily resonates. DADDY WAS A NUMBERS RUNNER (1986, 2002) is her semi-autobiographical faux-novel about Harlem in the 1930s, after the cabaret dances, after the "numbers," and after the UNIA were all nearly-gone! It is also clearer to me, why, when I first ventured to Harlem, New York in Spring 1970, as a Howard University freshman, Harlem looked so poorly, so depressed, so abandoned, raw and dispirited, I was disappointed in its fallen state.
Walking down Lennox Avenue after alighting from our chartered bus, one enterprising Harlem brother tried to sell me, to sell us, a refrigerator on the street! I laughed aloud! Is this Harlem I wondered? Yes! Still Harlem it is.
It was still "cool," too, somehow, anyway, even after its rhythm was gone, even after its "numbers" money was gone, even after the UNIA's presence was gone!
Bare, but still, there, was Harlem!
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
DANCING HARLEM'S RENAISSANCE BLUES
DANCING HARLEM'S RENAISSANCE BLUES
Africans dance. King David danced. Salome danced for John. Bojangles danced. Dunham danced. Dance is the metronome of a people. Dance embodies the rhythm of its people . Taking away dance takes away tacit communications linkages that bind a people.
Learning yesterday, October 31, 2017, that the City of New York had finally repealed a 91-year old law, precluding dancing in "cabarets" where food and liquor were served, I was shocked to learn of the existence of such an absurdly insidious law!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/pitchfork.com/news/new-york-city-council-votes-to-repeal-anti-dancing-cabaret-law/amp/
"When Harlem was in Vogue," it was all about music, dance, white folks swarming uptown to immerse in black culture in Harlem: to dance with, to mate with, to patronize, to mimic the amazing energy of that era's juggernaut. Harlem was the heart of the "Harlem Renaissance." That cultural revolution is now broadly misunderstood, is now naively misinterpreted, as being one limited to poets, novelists, painters, sculptors. A Negro outpouring of arts and culture, that consisted of music, dance, literature, plays, fashion, black consciousness, art, it was. But, it was also much much more: both pervasive and Pan-African!
Just as quickly, it seems in retrospect, those ever-viperous, racist outliers and their lawyers, downtown, caught the "A-Train;" moved uptown to Harlem to destroy this Negro renaissance's extraordinary, cultural resurgence. Dancing was one of its victims!
Down went the "Lindy Hop!" an others that fabled, sensual pairing of twirling, whirling, male and female rhythmical athletes,who were clad in stylized attire that was fashionable and fantastic!
Around this time, "the numbers," or "policy," that black self-help economic recycling engine that had raised millions of dollars from black patrons, inside of the black community for home mortgages, tuition payments, car notes, rent, groceries, business ventures, everyday needs, was mislabeled as a so-called "racket" by crooked New York politicians, who coveted its cream, wealth!
This financial wheel of the Harlem Renaissance was broken up. And its principal founder, Caspar Holstein, a mathematically -minded, former black elevator operator, from the Danish West Indies, who had studied the New York Stock Exchange, and who had found their his latent algorithm, upon which he assiduously based a number's "hit," was jailed and then deported.
Holstein's financial empire, which at one time employed hundreds in Harlem, was then taken over by some infamously murderous mafiosi figures. These terrorists bombed black numbers bankers. They killed the numbers runners. They took over the numbers. They rigged the game, making it pay less than the predictable, 600-1, as before. They paid off police, politicians, judges, in turn.
Around the same time in the 1920's, that "unlicensed" cabaret dancing was being outlawed in New York City, and that the "numbers" "racket" was being handed over to terrorist mafia figures, by secret agreements between them, prosecutors, police, the numbers were also legislatively later made to be illegal there in the state. ( It now is called "The Lottery" and operates all over America). At this time, too, the renown founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey of St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, was being prosecuted for alleged mail/securities fraud by the federal government.
The documentary evidence against Marcus Garvey consisted of a single empty post-marked envelope that contained nothing. Yet, the U. S. Department of Justice was able to "convict" this exalted global leader of tens of millions of black people of mail fraud. Garvey had been trying to raise money for the Black Star Ship Line from among UNIA members, to return to Africa, and away from white American racism in America, Cuba, Central America, elsewhere.
What kind of people would prevent, would sabotage attempts of others, from doing for themselves;, then, thereafter having disabled that person or group, by laws, regulations, selective enforcement of police, mafia, or prosecutions; then, turn right around to belittle them, to mock them, to lampoon them, and others like them, for not having been able to do for themselves? Surely only a perverse people, an oppressive people would behave in such a way!
Now it is clear to me, at least, why Louise Meriweather's profound sociological book yet eerily resonates. DADDY WAS A NUMBERS RUNNER (1986, 2002) is her semi-autobiographical faux-novel about Harlem in the 1930s, after the cabaret dances, after the "numbers," and after the UNIA were all nearly-gone! It is also clearer to me, why, when I first ventured to Harlem, New York in Spring 1970, as a Howard University freshman, Harlem looked so poorly, so depressed, so abandoned, raw and dispirited, I was disappointed in its fallen state.
Walking down Lennox Avenue after alighting from our chartered bus, one enterprising Harlem brother tried to sell me, to sell us, a refrigerator on the street! I laughed aloud! Is this Harlem I wondered? Yes! Still Harlem it is.
It was still "cool," too, somehow, anyway, even after its rhythm was gone, even after its "numbers" money was gone, even after the UNIA's presence was gone!
Bare, but still, there, was Harlem!
